A single malware-infected USB stick led to huge 2008 compromise of U.S. Central Command's classified and unclassified systems in Iraq. The attack was conducted by a foreign intelligence agency; Russia is suspected. (Source: Cocos Promotions)

The U.S. government also has to worry about betrayal within. It's giving 19 year olds access to its most sensitive systems. And U.S. Army specialist Bradley Manning showed the folly of that policy when it was recently alleged that he betrayed that trust, passing classified documents to foreign nationals. (Source: Telegraph UK)

The purposeful attack occurred in 2008 in the Middle East and led to the theft of classified information

In
a Foreign
Affairs journal
post,
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn III reveals that in 2008 the
U.S fell victim to an insidious cyber assault.

The
August 25 post describes how an infected flash drive was plugged into
a single U.S. military laptop in the Middle East and "spread
undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing
what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be
transferred to servers under foreign control."

The result
was the most dangerous cyber attack in U.S. history. Both
classified and unclassified infected systems were communicating with
and exposed their information to foreign servers. Based on the
location of those servers, past reports indicate that the U.S.
government suspects the attack originated from Russia; in the article
Secretary Lynn only refers to it as originating from "a foreign
intelligence agency".

Since the incident, the U.S.
military initially banned flash drives from use with its systems, but
has since
relaxed that provision slightly. Its efforts are now
focusing on "active defense systems", an attempt to try to
be more vigilant for possible malware or attempts to communicate with
untrusted servers.

Secretary Lynn says his reason for
publishing details of severe assault was to raise public awareness to
the growing threat of cybersecurity. He says that defending our
nation in a sometimes hostile internet-savvy world is "not
easy".

Unlike forward-looking fictional works like The
Neuromancer that
depict a futuristic internet-connected U.S. that acts as a cyber
aggressor, recent U.S. government reports indicate that the
government instead has evolved into somewhat
of a "cyber weakling" in terms of security.

The
U.S. government is struggling to leverage the substantial security
talent of its nation's citizens like China or Russia. The
result is that the U.S. government and
its contractors have fell victims to several
attacks. The U.S. has also fallen victim to cyberintrusions
from foreign sources into critical free market entities like
power utilities.

Under former President George W. Bush and now
under President Barack Obama, the government has promised to step up
its act, working to develop a more cohesive plan for cybersecurity.
President Obama in February 2009 appointed the
nation's first Security Czar, Melissa Hathaway. Ms. Hathaway, a
former director of national intelligence under the Bush
administration was tasked with coordinating inter-agency
cybersecurity efforts.

There are currently a number of
proposals on the table to create some form of new agency (like the
CIA, FBI, etc.) tasked with U.S. cybersecurity at home and
abroad. One
of the bills looks to create a bureau called the National
Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC), which would be a
sub-bureau of the Department of Homeland Security.

The
incident described by Secretary Lynn -- catastrophic actions
originating from packages malware aboard a USB stick -- immediately
brings to mind a recent incident, in which malware aboard a USB stick
attached to a Spanish airline computer interfered with its
communications contributing
to its crash. (which occurred in 2008). The
infection slowed down system alerts at the airline's
headquarters which could have canceled or delayed the flight.
Both the new report from the Pentagon and the recently published
details on the Spanair incident reveal the steep costs of
cybersecurity breaches in an increasingly connected world.

"Nowadays you can buy a CPU cheaper than the CPU fan." -- Unnamed AMD executive